On April 6, 1971, the American consulate in East Pakistan sent a horrified wire: "Our government has failed to denounce atrocities.... The overworked term genocide genocide is applicable." Nixon did nothing. The very next day, the American team competing in the World Table Tennis Championships in Nagoya, j.a.pan, convened a news conference: they had been invited to play exhibition matches that weekend in China-the first American group of any size to visit Red China since John Foster Dulles turned his back on Chou En-lai's outstretched hand at the Geneva Convention in 1954. China had just come through the Cultural Revolution, as ruthless a disruption of any civilization in history. Its society was so closed that the American media reported on it-when they could get inside the country-as if on another planet. is applicable." Nixon did nothing. The very next day, the American team competing in the World Table Tennis Championships in Nagoya, j.a.pan, convened a news conference: they had been invited to play exhibition matches that weekend in China-the first American group of any size to visit Red China since John Foster Dulles turned his back on Chou En-lai's outstretched hand at the Geneva Convention in 1954. China had just come through the Cultural Revolution, as ruthless a disruption of any civilization in history. Its society was so closed that the American media reported on it-when they could get inside the country-as if on another planet. Time Time managed to get an Australian reporter to Canton in October of 1967. He saw mobs "surround and beat an old man who dared look at an anti-Mao poster." Then they surrounded the reporter: "What are you doing here, white devil?" He observed, "Practically no one smiles." managed to get an Australian reporter to Canton in October of 1967. He saw mobs "surround and beat an old man who dared look at an anti-Mao poster." Then they surrounded the reporter: "What are you doing here, white devil?" He observed, "Practically no one smiles."

Now, in 1971, team member Tim Boggan reported back in the New York Times New York Times of a China in which everyone smiled: "sumptuous" nine-course meals, "lush green paddy fields framed by pine-clad hills," an arena "grander than Madison Square Garden," "a large playground where perhaps 200 children of all ages were playing soccer, basketball, and other sports" (a twelve-year-old handed him his hat at a Ping-Pong table with a net made of bricks). The hospitality was so overwhelming, Boggan wrote, that one team member's wife started crying. He quoted his hippie teammate Glenn Cowan of Santa Monica, California, "whose casual, outgoing manner has made him a favorite with photographers and reporters on the other side of the border": "I really believe life is simple. It's all the other people that make things complicated." of a China in which everyone smiled: "sumptuous" nine-course meals, "lush green paddy fields framed by pine-clad hills," an arena "grander than Madison Square Garden," "a large playground where perhaps 200 children of all ages were playing soccer, basketball, and other sports" (a twelve-year-old handed him his hat at a Ping-Pong table with a net made of bricks). The hospitality was so overwhelming, Boggan wrote, that one team member's wife started crying. He quoted his hippie teammate Glenn Cowan of Santa Monica, California, "whose casual, outgoing manner has made him a favorite with photographers and reporters on the other side of the border": "I really believe life is simple. It's all the other people that make things complicated."

This was what Nixon had been dreaming of. "You know, young people really like 'people to people,' they really do," he p.r.o.nounced with satisfaction to Ehrlichman. "Sure. Their ideal is to think everybody's good, pure.... That's why the China thing is so really really dis...o...b..bulating to these G.o.dd.a.m.ned liberals-really kills 'em! The China thing-must just kill 'em. For me to do it. Don't you think?" dis...o...b..bulating to these G.o.dd.a.m.ned liberals-really kills 'em! The China thing-must just kill 'em. For me to do it. Don't you think?"

Kissinger: "Sure."

"Because it's their their bag." bag."

"Sure."

"Not supposed to be my my bag." bag."

"But you you went at it in a way that made it possible to do." went at it in a way that made it possible to do."

Editorialized the New York Times, New York Times, "A ping pong ball has cracked the bamboo curtain," not making altogether too much out of it. The most Scotty Reston could imagine coming of it was that Americans would be able to enjoy a visit from the Peking Opera. The vice president had no idea of the astonishments to come; to reporters at a Republican Governors' Conference, the man who fulminated in Lincoln Day speeches against progressive preachers who set as their "goal on earth the recognition of Red China and the preservation of the Florida alligator" said "Ping-Pong diplomacy" had handed Mao a propaganda victory. "A ping pong ball has cracked the bamboo curtain," not making altogether too much out of it. The most Scotty Reston could imagine coming of it was that Americans would be able to enjoy a visit from the Peking Opera. The vice president had no idea of the astonishments to come; to reporters at a Republican Governors' Conference, the man who fulminated in Lincoln Day speeches against progressive preachers who set as their "goal on earth the recognition of Red China and the preservation of the Florida alligator" said "Ping-Pong diplomacy" had handed Mao a propaganda victory.

At the end of April, as the senior signatory of the cable about genocide in Bangladesh was relieved of his duties, the latest breakthrough came in via the Pakistani amba.s.sador: "The Chinese government reaffirms its willingness to receive publicly in Peking a special envoy of the President of the United States (for instance Mr. Kissinger) or the U.S. Secretary of State or even the President himself." Kissinger relayed a message of thanks to the butcher of Bangladesh for his "delicacy and tact."

China was only one of the diplomatic b.a.l.l.s Nixon was juggling. Three weeks later, on May 18, as Nixon conferred with Haldeman and Colson about how they would get Edmund Muskie and Teddy Kennedy more closely tailed, Kissinger exploded into the room. "The thing is okay!" he cried. Colson, puzzled, was ushered out; it was hard to communicate super-secret diplomatic breakthroughs in the presence of unauthorized individuals. "The thing" was a back-channel agreement for a framework on antiballistic missiles-heralding, as the public statement put it (only hours after Secretary of State Rogers and the head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency learned about the existence of the secret talks), "more favorable conditions for further negotiations to limit all strategic arms."

On May 31 Kissinger got word from the Pakistani amba.s.sador that "a very encouraging and positive response to the last message" had come from China: "Level of meeting will be as proposed by you." In other words, Nixon was going to China-and hardly a soul in the world knew it.

The next night was that 1971 Last Press Conference, when Nixon had expected fascination with his breakthroughs, but the gnats swarmed over him instead for the dodgy arrests of the May demonstrators in the capital. Well, he had had enough of the gnats. He didn't need them anymore.

He'd attended the White House Correspondents' a.s.sociation Dinner in May: "Every one of the recipients was receiving an award for a vicious attack on the administration," he moaned. "They are truly a third house supporting the Democratic candidates." He told Kissinger and Colson during a Potomac River cruise celebrating the SALT breakthrough, "We'll get them on the ground where we want them. And we'll stick our heels in, step on them hard and twist...no mercy." Colson met with the president of NBC on June 8 for a nut-cutting session: the White House, like a Mafia outfit, "suggested" they run a special on Tricia Nixon's June 12 wedding, even though all three networks would be covering it live. "They couldn't oblige us fast enough," Colson reported. "Julian Goodman jumped out of his chair."

Nixon had a theory about the media: the only thing they respected was force. Let them twist in the wind until he needed them-when it came time to announce the China trip.

This "triangular diplomacy" was a paradoxical thing, a product of that complex transit between the raging, mercurial Nixon and the coolly rational Nixon, the riverboat gambler and the chess player, Nixons old and new. He was getting out of Vietnam in the most unhinged possible way: dribbling out American troops while stepping up the bombing for fear of showing America "a pitiful, helpless giant" (according to one estimate, 350,000 civilians died in Laos from the bombing for Operation Dewey Canyon II and 600,000 in Cambodia for Operation Menu). But his backstage maneuvering was based in a pragmatic understanding few others were wise enough to reach: that America was no longer the world's eight-hundred-pound gorilla.

He had read the economic tea leaves: America's exports had grown by two-thirds over the past decade but Western Europe's had more than doubled. j.a.pan's had more than quadrupled, and doubled with the United States from 1965 to 1967 alone. The world trading system agreed to at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 set a gold standard: $35 of U.S. currency could always be exchanged for an ounce of gold. That was swell when the United States was the free world's unquestioned economic superpower. But this novelty-a trade deficit-was making it more worthwhile for a foreign country to exchange dollars for gold than to buy any U.S. goods, the ounce being worth more in real terms than the thirty-five bucks. America was becoming weaker vis-a-vis the rest of the world.

Nixon outlined all this in a strange and apocalyptic July 6, 1971, tour de horizon tour de horizon to a gathering of media executives at a Holiday Inn in Kansas City. The High Cold War was over, he explained; the last third of the twentieth century would be "an era of negotiation rather than confrontation." The real arms race was over trade and markets. "Economic power will be the key to other kinds of power." Thus the global chessboard became not a chessboard at all. The game was multipolar: "When we think in economic terms and economic potentialities, there are five great power centers in the world today," the United States, Western Europe, j.a.pan, the Soviet Union, and China-with j.a.pan and Western Europe the real potential rivals. to a gathering of media executives at a Holiday Inn in Kansas City. The High Cold War was over, he explained; the last third of the twentieth century would be "an era of negotiation rather than confrontation." The real arms race was over trade and markets. "Economic power will be the key to other kinds of power." Thus the global chessboard became not a chessboard at all. The game was multipolar: "When we think in economic terms and economic potentialities, there are five great power centers in the world today," the United States, Western Europe, j.a.pan, the Soviet Union, and China-with j.a.pan and Western Europe the real potential rivals.

Had they known where this was headed, the execs' media outlets might have given Nixon's speech more notice. But his diplomacy was so secret, it was hard to see why the speech was significant: that the tilt away from Europe and j.a.pan would be balanced by a lean toward Russia and China. The significance of Kansas City's Holiday Inn in the annals of world diplomacy was only recognized years after the fact. For all his listeners knew, when Henry Kissinger disappeared from the diplomatic press corps' radar the next day on an official visit to Pakistan, it was just as his handlers claimed: that he was indisposed with a stomachache. He had actually ducked inside the People's Republic of China to close the deal for a presidential visit.

The stakes for keeping secrets had never been higher. And yet it happened as the White House suffered one of the most dramatic leaks in the history of the republic-one that saw Richard Nixon revert to his most irrational self.

Thus, in the summer of '71, the doors were opened to Watergate.

The June 13 Sunday New York Times New York Times front page had one feature to delight the president: a picture of him arm in arm with his daughter, walking her down the aisle in her billowing white dress on her wedding day. front page had one feature to delight the president: a picture of him arm in arm with his daughter, walking her down the aisle in her billowing white dress on her wedding day.

The bad news was two columns to the right.

The headline read, "Vietnam Archive: Pentagon Study Traces 3 Decades of U.S. Involvement." The lead paragraph began, "A ma.s.sive study of how the United States went to war in Indochina, conducted by the Pentagon three years ago, demonstrates that four administrations progressively developed a sense of commitment to a non-Communist Vietnam, a readiness to fight the North to protect the South, and an ultimate frustration with this effort-to a much greater extent than their public statements acknowledged at the time."

It was a polite way of saying Americans had been lied to for twenty-five years.

The lies went back to Harry Truman, the article explained. Military aid to France had "directly involved" the United States in preserving a European colony; the Eisenhower administration played "a direct role in the ultimate breakdown in the Geneva settlement" and the cancellation of free elections scheduled for 1956. (President Nixon always said honoring Geneva was the reason we had to continue the war.) Kennedy-this in the Pentagon study's words-transformed the "limited-risk gamble" he inherited into a "broad commitment." Lyndon Johnson laid plans for full-fledged war as early as the spring of 1964-campaigning against Barry Goldwater with the line "We seek no wider war."

What became known as the Pentagon Papers-three thousand pages of historical narrative and four thousand pages of government doc.u.ments-was shocking to all but the most hardened antiwar cynics. The expansion into genuine warfare began, the Times Times summarized, "despite the judgment of the government's intelligence community that the measures would not cause Hanoi to cease its support of the Viet Cong insurgency in the South.... The bombing was deemed militarily ineffective within a few months." To catalog the number of times Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon looked the American people squarely in the eye and said the exact opposite would require another book. summarized, "despite the judgment of the government's intelligence community that the measures would not cause Hanoi to cease its support of the Viet Cong insurgency in the South.... The bombing was deemed militarily ineffective within a few months." To catalog the number of times Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon looked the American people squarely in the eye and said the exact opposite would require another book.

Astonishments popped from every column of six inside pages. The new Saigon government, Secretary McNamara had written December 21, 1963-sold to the American people as the first light at the end of the tunnel-was "indecisive and drifting," and "Viet Cong progress has been great during the period since the coup." The Joint Chiefs of Staff had recommended extending military operations to Laos and Cambodia at a time when, officially, they hadn't even started in Vietnam. Then there was the stunning revelation of 1964's "OP PLAN 34-A": American frogmen demolishing bridges and piers, Special Forces kidnapping prisoners, planes bombing railroad tracks, "cross-border penetration" into Laos, "general hara.s.sing activities against Pathet Lao military installations," "Strikes on targets of opportunity," a "Corridor interdiction program." This was what had inspired the North Vietnamese to hara.s.s our ships at the Gulf of Tonkin in August of 1964-a response sold to Congress as unprovoked.

The next day's Times Times revealed the White House's "general consensus" to bomb North Vietnam began the same day as LBJ's presidential campaign, and the paper quoted a memo on the "need to design whatever actions were taken so as to achieve maximum public and Congressional support"-to lie, in other words. The third day revealed the smokingest gun of all-a memo from a.s.sistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs John McNaughton breaking down, in Robert McNamara's preferred statistical terms, why we were persisting in Vietnam: revealed the White House's "general consensus" to bomb North Vietnam began the same day as LBJ's presidential campaign, and the paper quoted a memo on the "need to design whatever actions were taken so as to achieve maximum public and Congressional support"-to lie, in other words. The third day revealed the smokingest gun of all-a memo from a.s.sistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs John McNaughton breaking down, in Robert McNamara's preferred statistical terms, why we were persisting in Vietnam: 70%-To avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat....20%-To keep SVN (and the adjacent) territory from Chinese hands.10%-To permit the people of SVN to enjoy a better, freer way of life.ALSO-To emerge from the crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used.NOT-To "help a friend."

That was written two weeks before the nationally televised address in which President Johnson explained "the principles for which our sons fight tonight in the jungles of Vietnam"-that they were the same "for which our ancestors fought in the valleys of Pennsylvania." Thus it was that June of 1971 marked the deadline beyond which any morally aware American could believe anything the government told them about Vietnam.

On June 15 the Times Times headlined, "Mitch.e.l.l Seeks to Halt Series on Vietnam but headlined, "Mitch.e.l.l Seeks to Halt Series on Vietnam but Times Times Refuses." There was no installment the next day nonetheless. In its customary spot was an article on the Justice Department's investigation into the ident.i.ty of the leaker, and the ruling of U.S. district judge Murray Gurfein temporarily enjoining further publication while he reviewed "espionage charges against the Refuses." There was no installment the next day nonetheless. In its customary spot was an article on the Justice Department's investigation into the ident.i.ty of the leaker, and the ruling of U.S. district judge Murray Gurfein temporarily enjoining further publication while he reviewed "espionage charges against the Times Times and persons unknown." and persons unknown."

Then the Washington Post Washington Post started running the Pentagon Papers. Reported the started running the Pentagon Papers. Reported the Post, Post, "There are 15 'legitimate' copies of the controversial Pentagon report on Vietnam, the administration disclosed yesterday, and a ma.s.sive hunt is on to identify the one in which the "There are 15 'legitimate' copies of the controversial Pentagon report on Vietnam, the administration disclosed yesterday, and a ma.s.sive hunt is on to identify the one in which the New York Times New York Times"-and now, they didn't add, the Washington Post Washington Post-"was given access."

The president was at first indifferent to the whodunit game. He had his suspects-Leslie Gelb, deputy director of the Defense Department's Office of Policy Planning under Johnson, now a fellow at the Brookings Inst.i.tution; or another one of those "f.u.c.king Jews"-but he wasn't disposed to worry about a doc.u.ment completed before he was inaugurated and covering events only through 1968. "Make sure we call them the Kennedy-Johnson papers," he had told Haldeman at first, prepared to let the chips fall where they may.

Historians would debate the reasons for the president's subsequent change of heart. They agree Kissinger was crucial in changing his boss's mind. Some suspect Kissinger was terrified the study might tarnish him-Gelb had been Kissinger's student at Harvard; or perhaps the leaker was one of Kissinger's former staffers who'd quit after the Cambodian invasion. Others suspected that Nixon and Kissinger worried that another suspect had high-level access to the Single Integrated Operational Plan-the nation's nuclear secrets-and might be enough of a wild man to make releasing them his next act of bureaucratic terror.

But the reasons for panic weren't really that complicated. Nixon-Kissinger diplomacy made credibly guaranteeing discretion to negotiating partners the first, even sacred, priority. Nixon was reminded of this by Kissinger (pretending to be on vacation, but really firming up plans for a scouting trip to China): "It could destroy our ability to conduct foreign policy. If other powers feel we cannot control internal leaks, they will not agree to secret negotiations." Of course he also uttered a colorful Kissingerism that his boss never failed to find persuasive: "It shows you're a weakling, Mr. President." And so the panic burst forth.

Nixon had ten minutes scheduled on June 16 with a twenty-five-year-old former naval officer named John O'Neill, the spokesman for the front group Chuck Colson had set up to combat John Kerry, Veterans for a Just Peace, they called it. O'Neill had earned his time with the president with an appearance on CBS's Face the Nation Face the Nation that sent Colson over the moon-"I don't think he said 'we support the president' more than eighteen times," he gushed, adding, "O'Neill is a very attractive, dedicated young man-short hair, very square, very patriotic, very articulate." that sent Colson over the moon-"I don't think he said 'we support the president' more than eighteen times," he gushed, adding, "O'Neill is a very attractive, dedicated young man-short hair, very square, very patriotic, very articulate."

The president ended up spending half an hour with O'Neill and didn't want the meeting to end. O'Neill left pledging he would spend every waking moment campaigning for Richard Nixon-a welcome respite for the president, for whom every other meeting was ending in tirades about who was out to destroy him via the Pentagon Papers leaks.

By the next day, they had only one suspect-the one man who knew too much. His name was obscure to the public. It had only appeared in the New York Times New York Times five times. Once was for his 1950 wedding to a general's daughter: "Mr. Ellsberg...is attending Harvard College, where he is president of the Harvard Advocate, a member of the editorial board of the five times. Once was for his 1950 wedding to a general's daughter: "Mr. Ellsberg...is attending Harvard College, where he is president of the Harvard Advocate, a member of the editorial board of the Harvard Crimson, Harvard Crimson, and a member of Signet Society." The announcement of his second marriage in 1970 (to, Nixon noted, a millionaire's daughter) added more ornaments to his resume: "The bridegroom was graduated summa c.u.m laude from Harvard College, where he was a member of the Society of Fellows and where he received a doctorate in economics. He served as a lieutenant in the Marine Corps and worked as a strategic a.n.a.lyst with the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif." In between, the and a member of Signet Society." The announcement of his second marriage in 1970 (to, Nixon noted, a millionaire's daughter) added more ornaments to his resume: "The bridegroom was graduated summa c.u.m laude from Harvard College, where he was a member of the Society of Fellows and where he received a doctorate in economics. He served as a lieutenant in the Marine Corps and worked as a strategic a.n.a.lyst with the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif." In between, the Times Times mentioned his argument in a 1969 anthology of essays on Vietnam that the war was so unmitigatedly horrifying because "to paraphrase H. Rap Brown, bombing is as American as cherry pie." Then, on October 9, 1969, the mentioned his argument in a 1969 anthology of essays on Vietnam that the war was so unmitigatedly horrifying because "to paraphrase H. Rap Brown, bombing is as American as cherry pie." Then, on October 9, 1969, the Times Times ran "Six Rand Experts Support Pullout; Back Unilateral Steps Within One Year in Vietnam"; he was one of the experts-and the lead signatory of a November 1970 letter to the editor of the ran "Six Rand Experts Support Pullout; Back Unilateral Steps Within One Year in Vietnam"; he was one of the experts-and the lead signatory of a November 1970 letter to the editor of the Times Times from MIT faculty accusing Nixon of "vastly expanding this immoral, illegal, and unconst.i.tutional war...and the moral degradation of our country." from MIT faculty accusing Nixon of "vastly expanding this immoral, illegal, and unconst.i.tutional war...and the moral degradation of our country."

Thus was limned an evolving ident.i.ty: one of the defense Establishment's best and brightest had by turns become its most dedicated critic.

Dan Ellsberg had been an obvious choice for Robert McNamara as lead author when he commissioned the Pentagon Papers in June of 1967. Ellsberg's combination of book smarts, policy experience, and time spent on the ground in the jungle was unique: he had volunteered for Vietnam in 1965, serving two years with General Edward Lansdale, one of the war's architects, and as a combat officer his commander called "the best platoon leader I had." McNamara had recruited the anonymous authors for their expertise, whatever their feelings about the war. And by then Ellsberg was a Vietnam critic, if a quiet one. After General Westmoreland came to the United States to preach to Congress about the "light at the end of the tunnel," Ellsberg lectured the Times Times's Vietnam correspondent, Neil Sheehan, and its Washington bureau chief, Tom Wicker, "You guys have been conned." Westmoreland's presentation, Ellsberg said, had been pure propaganda, though propaganda softened up at the last minute. "You should have seen what they wanted wanted to tell you"-lies so exaggerated Westmoreland would have been laughed off the House floor. to tell you"-lies so exaggerated Westmoreland would have been laughed off the House floor.

The lying: it burned Daniel Ellsberg to the core. But there was nothing he could do about it: the cables proving it were top secret.

It was only natural that Henry Kissinger had called Ellsberg, one of his most brilliant students at Harvard, to Nixon transition headquarters at the Hotel Pierre in New York City to consult on policy options in Vietnam. But by that time, December 1968, Ellsberg was neck deep in primary doc.u.ments demonstrating that the wisest American policymakers had understood from the beginning that South Vietnam could never survive on its own as a viable political ent.i.ty, that it would take upward of a million troops or even atomic bombs to sustain it, that the reason the war was kept going was domestic politics. One of the options Ellsberg presented Kissinger at the Pierre was unilateral and total withdrawal. That didn't make it into Kissinger's report to the president-elect. Ellsberg realized then and there that the Nixon administration would be willing to sustain ma.s.sive carnage to end Vietnam the way it preferred.

Ellsberg had lectured Henry Kissinger in that hotel room, lectured him about the narcotic effect of secrets: "It will become very hard for you to learn from anybody who doesn't have clearances. Because you're thinking as you listen to them: 'What would this man be telling me if he knew what I know?'.... You'll become something like a moron...incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they may have." Lyndon Johnson, after all, did it: "I'm just not in a position to know how much information each critic of my policy in Vietnam happens to have," he'd say. "It makes me wish that all this information was available to everybody who is a.s.suming responsibilities in this matter." American Legion counterprotesters would say, "All of the sudden, you guys on the streets, you know more than the secretary of state."

Well, Daniel Ellsberg did did know more than the secretary of state. And by the time the Pentagon Papers were done at the beginning of 1969, it was driving him nearly insane. William Rogers and Melvin Laird had access to the Papers. But it hadn't seemed to affect any of their recommendations. know more than the secretary of state. And by the time the Pentagon Papers were done at the beginning of 1969, it was driving him nearly insane. William Rogers and Melvin Laird had access to the Papers. But it hadn't seemed to affect any of their recommendations.

Ellsberg had been given one of only fifteen existing copies to hold in his safe. He was lying in bed in September of 1969 when he read the army was dropping the charges against Green Berets alleged to have murdered a Vietnamese civilian, and that according to the White House press secretary, "The president had not involved himself either in the original decision to prosecute the men or in the decision to drop the charges against them." It was easy for Ellsberg to spot a Vietnam lie by then. This one was the straw that broke the camel's back. He called a colleague, Anthony Russo: "Tony, can you get ahold of a Xerox machine?"

Ellsberg had seven thousand pages of photocopying to do.

He spent over a year trying to convince someone to take them public. But neither Senators Fulbright, McGovern, nor Goodell were willing. McGovern told him it wasn't the place of a lawmaker to break the law, but that the First Amendment made it altogether appropriate to make the doc.u.ments available to a newspaper. Neil Sheehan of the New York Times New York Times proved ready to take on the risk. Thus, the proved ready to take on the risk. Thus, the Times Times on June 13, 1971: "Vietnam Archive: Pentagon Study Traces 3 Decades of U.S. Involvement." Now every Vietnam lie was public. on June 13, 1971: "Vietnam Archive: Pentagon Study Traces 3 Decades of U.S. Involvement." Now every Vietnam lie was public.

Kissinger figured out by the seventeenth that Ellsberg was the culprit. Destroying him became a White House crusade. Something snapped in Richard Nixon. He seemed to think it was 1948. "Go back and read the chapter on the Hiss case in Six Crises Six Crises and you'll see how it was done," he would say. "This takes eighteen hours a day. It takes devotion and dedication, a loyalty and diligence such as you've never seen, Bob. I've never worked as hard in my life and I'll never work as hard again because I don't have the energy. But this thing is a h.e.l.l of a great opportunity." The theory was that, once upon a time, another Harvard-educated traitor, Alger Hiss, had been taken down at what appeared to be his moment of maximum vindication-not only establishing Congressman Nixon's career, but r.e.t.a.r.ding half a generation of progress for the Democrats as they tore each other's eyeb.a.l.l.s out debating Hiss's guilt or innocence. and you'll see how it was done," he would say. "This takes eighteen hours a day. It takes devotion and dedication, a loyalty and diligence such as you've never seen, Bob. I've never worked as hard in my life and I'll never work as hard again because I don't have the energy. But this thing is a h.e.l.l of a great opportunity." The theory was that, once upon a time, another Harvard-educated traitor, Alger Hiss, had been taken down at what appeared to be his moment of maximum vindication-not only establishing Congressman Nixon's career, but r.e.t.a.r.ding half a generation of progress for the Democrats as they tore each other's eyeb.a.l.l.s out debating Hiss's guilt or innocence.

Chuck Colson-who had defiantly turned down a full scholarship to Harvard because it was too liberal, and to snub the administrators who told him, "No one has ever turned down a full scholarship at Harvard"-was so eager to please his boss that he read the Hiss chapter fourteen times. Ellsberg, he told Haldeman he now understood, was "a natural villain to the extent that he can be painted evil. We can very effectively make the point of why we [had] to do what we did with the New York Times New York Times"-to take down a conspiracy as vast and perfidious as the one Alger Hiss had joined. Some in the White House even believed it; the Justice Department's Robert Mardian, tapped by Nixon to run the federal prosecution of Ellsberg, claimed that days before the Pentagon Papers were delivered to the Washington Post, Washington Post, they pa.s.sed through the Soviet emba.s.sy. they pa.s.sed through the Soviet emba.s.sy.

"We have the Democrats on a marvelous hook because thus far most of them have defended the release of the doc.u.ments," Colson said. Take down Ellsberg and you took down those Democrats, too-perhaps took down the opposition party itself. "I have not yet thought through all the subtle ways in which we can keep the Democratic Party in a constant state of civil warfare," Colson summed, "but I am convinced that with some imagination and creative thought it can be done."

Such talk got Richard Nixon's creative juices flowing. Provide top-secret doc.u.ments to an infiltrator in one of the peace groups, which could then get caught "peddling them around," he suggested on Monday the twenty-third. (Haldeman a.s.sured him they were already working on it.) The next day Nixon proposed that an "Ellsberg who's on our side" could dig up preWorld War II doc.u.ments to decla.s.sify-Richard Nixon's own pumpkin papers-to prove that FDR knew about the j.a.panese attack on Pearl Harbor in advance. The Democratic Party would be "gone without a trace if we do this correctly," Nixon p.r.o.nounced l.u.s.tily. Haldeman thought that a fine idea, too, but suggested they start with doc.u.ments from the Cuban missile crisis or Bay of Pigs instead: "Those are the ones that are likely to get lost the fastest." The president, who salved his basest guilts by presuming everyone else as venal as himself, caught his drift right off: Democrats all over town were by then "probably burning stuff and hiding stuff as fast as they can."

The work proceeded amid smoldering political frustration. Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield had an amendment to the Selective Service reorganization bill-Nixon's crucial bid to turn down antiwar sentiment by removing young people's fear of getting drafted-that would require withdrawal of all troops once Hanoi released all prisoners of war. Mansfield's amendment pa.s.sed the Senate by a vote of 5742. Nixon called the majority leader to the White House for breakfast and threats: if the Paris peace talks and the strategic arms negotiations collapsed by the end of the month, he would go on television and blame Mansfield personally-and escalate the bombing to boot. Then he warned Speaker Carl Albert that if the House pa.s.sed a similar resolution, he would scuttle the Paris talks himself, saying Congress had given him no other choice.

But the bluffs were not working. Given the ongoing Pentagon Papers revelations, the antiwarriors held all the cards.

Then Nixon hit on the idea of finding evidence that the Kennedys ordered the 1963 a.s.sa.s.sination of South Vietnam president Ngo Dinh Diem, CIA complicity in Diem's pre-a.s.sa.s.sination overthrow having been one of the Pentagon Papers' most explosive revelations. Said Haldeman, "Huston swears to G.o.d there's a file on it at Brookings"-the Brookings Inst.i.tution think tank, their imagined Kennedy government-in-exile.

Nixon, straightening bolt upright: "Now, if you remember Huston's plan. I want it implemented. G.o.ddammit it, get in there and get those files. Go in and get those files."

Nixon repeated the order every day, frustrated that no one was carrying it out: "I want Brookings. I want them to just break in and take it out.... Do you understand? Do you understand?"

Haldeman pointed out a delicacy that might hold them up: "You have to find somebody to do it."

Where, in other words, do you find a figure of the cunning and criminal skill, with omerta omerta-like loyalty to a Republican president, who still had no lingering loyalties to the meddlesome bureaucrats of the CIA or FBI?

That became the next obsession. Edgar Hoover was too squeamish. (Robert Mardian was busy on a project to blackmail him into retiring by exposing the illegal wiretap transcripts Hoover had helped them obtain in 1969.) They batted around Caulfield and Ulasewicz, the former New York cops. (They weren't up to the magnitude of the task.) Richard V. Allen, the Kissinger staffer? (He might not be trustworthy enough.) Pat Buchanan? (He was offered the job and turned it down because he thought the project's "dividends" didn't "justify the magnitude of the investment recommended.") Huston? (He was too toxic to the intelligence Establishment and didn't have the public relations skills to "move it to the papers.") Ehrlichman? (More of a lawyer than a dirty trickster.) John Dean? (Too much the "little old lady.") Colson? (Plate too full: infiltrating the Muskie campaign; trying to catch Ted Kennedy en flagrante with a hooker; lining up ant.i.trust threats against ABC, NBC, CBS; preparing John O'Neill for a debate with now-congressional candidate John Kerry on the d.i.c.k Cavett Show. d.i.c.k Cavett Show.) Colson suggested E. Howard Hunt, the former CIA agent, a friend of the Buckley family: "He's a brilliant writer. He's written forty books on espionage."

Hunt's name had floated around the White House for various projects since 1970. Nixon worried if the fifty-three-year-old had the energy for the eighteen-hour days. But Nixon liked that Hunt had run the Bay of Pigs for the CIA: "He told me a long time ago," Colson said, "that if the truth were ever known, Kennedy would be destroyed."

Nixon asked Colson and Haldeman if they had any compunctions about the avenues they were exploring. Colson: "Oh, h.e.l.l no." Haldeman: "We've got to be repressive." The president contributed his own two cents: "They did that to me.... I want to go in and crack that safe."

And yet for a time they vacillated, approaching the abyss, then hanging back-until the possibility of keeping the Pentagon Papers from the public was foreclosed, on June 30, when the Supreme Court, after a labyrinthine court battle, ruled 63 that they could be published freely. Justice Brennan's decision argued that press reports that embarra.s.s the government were precisely the reason the First Amendment was invented. Justice Black concurred: "Every moment's continuance of the injunctions against these newspapers amounts to a flagrant, indefensible, and continuing violation of the First Amendment.... [F]or the first time in the 182 years since the founding of the Republic, the Federal courts are asked to hold that the First Amendment does not mean what it says." Just in case the court ruled the other way, the previous evening Mike Gravel, the forty-one-year-old senator from Alaska, had called an extraordinary two-man night "hearing" of his Subcommittee on Buildings and Grounds. He began reading aloud from a four-thousand-page typescript-the historical narrative portion of the Pentagon Papers, provided to him by an anonymous source.

He started at 9:45 p.m. "The story is a terrible one," Gravel warned. "It is replete with duplicity, connivance against the public. People, human beings, are being killed as I speak to you. Arms are being severed; metal is crashing through human bodies." Then, he began to weep.

Word of mouth spread; aides and reporters working late started filtering into the hearing room. Gravel read for three hours and then recessed, noting to reporters he might be risking expulsion from the Senate. He stopped at 1:12 a.m., promising to continue the next day. By then, he had broken out in sobs once more.

Gravel kept his Senate seat and was able to introduce the entire doc.u.ment into the Congressional Record. Congressional Record. That turned it into public property. Congressmen have extraordinary privileges. That turned it into public property. Congressmen have extraordinary privileges.

Which was why, the next day, Nixon discussed as his next move recruiting "another Senator McCarthy"-some right-wing exuberant to crush the conspiracy as only someone with congressional immunity against libel and slander could do. They brought up John Ashbrook, the former Draft Goldwater leader; Illinois's Phil Crane, a former leader of Young Americans for Freedom; the John Birch Society members in Congress, John G. Schmitz and John Rousselot. ("Mean, tough, ruthless," Nixon praised Rousselot, a protege. "He'll lie, do anything.") They regretted that Senator Dole of Kansas was already preoccupied as RNC chief. (He did the best he could for the team, telling reporters the Pentagon Papers' disclosure had left heads of state around the world "at the mercy of sensation-seeking newspapers.") The Twenty-sixth Amendment to the Const.i.tution pa.s.sed that same day. No one had expected it that fast: the Supreme Court had only struck down Ted Kennedy and Mike Mansfield's gambit to lower the voting age by congressional statute the previous December; the Times Times had predicted a const.i.tutional amendment would "almost certainly not be effective in a presidential election before 1976." Now eighteen-year-olds would be able to vote in time for 1972. Samuel Lubell, the prescient electoral a.n.a.lyst, wrote in had predicted a const.i.tutional amendment would "almost certainly not be effective in a presidential election before 1976." Now eighteen-year-olds would be able to vote in time for 1972. Samuel Lubell, the prescient electoral a.n.a.lyst, wrote in Look: Look: "As of now, the nation's newest voters would defeat Nixon.... Crammed into my interview notebooks are angry outbursts from business-oriented youths who say, 'The Republicans are better for my career,' but vow, 'I'll vote for almost any Democrat to end the war.'" Some spoke to him of their gratefulness that younger friends would be turned from a revolutionary path by their ability to vote. The early reports out of California were that despite predictions of widespread youth apathy, or that kids would mimic their parents, 90 percent of eligible high school students were registering, mostly as Democrats. "As of now, the nation's newest voters would defeat Nixon.... Crammed into my interview notebooks are angry outbursts from business-oriented youths who say, 'The Republicans are better for my career,' but vow, 'I'll vote for almost any Democrat to end the war.'" Some spoke to him of their gratefulness that younger friends would be turned from a revolutionary path by their ability to vote. The early reports out of California were that despite predictions of widespread youth apathy, or that kids would mimic their parents, 90 percent of eligible high school students were registering, mostly as Democrats.

The White House seemed to question its earlier easy a.s.sumption that Republicans wouldn't be hurt by the eighteen-year-old vote. Haldeman started worrying about strange things, such as the obscure new art-house doc.u.mentary on Nixon's career by Emile de Antonio, Millhouse: A White Comedy. Millhouse: A White Comedy. John Caulfield was tasked with studying de Antonio's FBI file for leakable information, lest his film turn the kids off from Nixon. John Caulfield was tasked with studying de Antonio's FBI file for leakable information, lest his film turn the kids off from Nixon.

Meanwhile, on the Ellsberg front, trusty Chuck Colson arrived at a new idea: firebomb Brookings, then get G-men posing as firemen to rush in and retrieve the Diem file from Leslie Gelb's safe.

If they only knew Leslie Gelb didn't have a safe and kept his office door unlocked, Jack Caulfield wouldn't have had to burst into John Dean's office, face flushed, in a panic: "Jesus Christ, John! You've got to help me! This guy Colson is crazy! He wants me to firebomb a G.o.dd.a.m.n building, and I can't do it!"

On Thursday night, July 15, the president went on TV for three minutes: "I have requested this television time tonight to announce a major development in our efforts to build a lasting peace in the world"-he would be traveling to China to seek normalization of the relations between the two countries.

No one stormed the White House; there wasn't even much protest from the right (whom Nixon, planning the announcement, had referred to as "the animals"). It was experienced like a healing spring rain, as if suddenly enemies were a thing of the past. All those decades of tension: Nixon made this one announcement, and there it was-gone. Love: just as the hippies said. Peace: just as the hippies said. "I really believe life is simple. It's all the other people that make things complicated." "I really believe life is simple. It's all the other people that make things complicated."

Meanwhile the White House operationalized its longtime goal of expanding its internal secret-policing capacity. They called it ODESSA, or the Special Investigations Unit, or the Room 16 Project, for its suite number in the White House bas.e.m.e.nt. It contained the kind of "sterile" telephones used by the CIA (a Secret Service agent used an IBM card to enter the access code every morning) and a safe that required three combinations to open. A doddering elderly relative of the coleader of the operation was proud to learn her boy was working on "leaks": "Your grandfather," she said, "was a plumber." In jest, he put up a sign on his office door: MR. YOUNG-PLUMBER. MR. YOUNG-PLUMBER. The Plumbers was the name by which the group became known. The Plumbers was the name by which the group became known.

Mr. Young-David Young-had been Kissinger's personal a.s.sistant. His superior in the enterprise, Egil "Bud" Krogh, thirty-two, grew up with John Ehrlichman and saw him as a father figure. Both, like Haldeman, were Christian Scientists. An acquaintance described Krogh as "a brisk, polite, dynamic young executive.... Never mussed, never damp, absolutely spick-and-span." Though some in the White House had taken to calling him "Evil" Krogh. This healthy right-wing exuberant was so proud watching his president rap with student demonstrators on the Mall in 1970 that he decided he was willing to take a bullet for him.

On July 19 they hired on another staffer, a former FBI agent, a.s.sistant district attorney, and failed congressional candidate from Dutchess County, New York. As an FBI agent, G. Gordon Liddy had been pushed out because he was, in the words of a superior, "a wild man" and a "superklutz." As a.s.sistant DA he had fired a pistol at the ceiling while summing up a case before a jury. When he lost a Republican congressional primary in 1968 (slogan: "Gordon Liddy doesn't bail them out-he puts them in") but won the Conservative Party's line, he was rewarded for throwing the race with a job at the Treasury Department-which he lost, in 1971, for speaking against the administration's gun-control bill at an NRA convention. He liked to show off his toughness by putting his hand in a candle flame. He also liked to demonstrate the best way to a.s.sa.s.sinate a man with office supplies: a puncture to the neck with a freshly sharpened pencil, directly above the Adam's apple. He confessed an admiration for Adolf Hitler and wrote in his memoirs about the Pledge of Allegiance, "I enjoyed enjoyed the ma.s.s salute and performed it well, unexcelled in speed of thrust and an iron-shaft steadiness throughout the remainder of the pledge. That habit became so deeply ingrained that even today, at a.s.semblies where the pledge is made or the national anthem played, I must suppress the urge to snap out my right arm." the ma.s.s salute and performed it well, unexcelled in speed of thrust and an iron-shaft steadiness throughout the remainder of the pledge. That habit became so deeply ingrained that even today, at a.s.semblies where the pledge is made or the national anthem played, I must suppress the urge to snap out my right arm."

Such was the caliber of the men now called to work in the Executive Mansion.

Colson had wanted Howard Hunt to lead the Plumbers, but Ehrlichman had other plans for him. Furnished with a red wig, a CIA-issue voice modifier, and "pocket litter" in the name of Edward J. Warren, he was a.s.signed to the Ted Kennedy floozy watch. Meanwhile, from newspaper clippings and interviews with Ellsberg's first wife and a restaurant owner whose mistress Ellsberg had apparently hit on, Hunt was ama.s.sing "all available overt, covert, and derogatory information." He was also poring over the Pentagon Papers to find a portal to tie the Kennedy brothers to Diem's a.s.sa.s.sination, and ghostwriting purple prose for use by a friendly Detroit News Detroit News writer about Ellsberg's defense attorney: "The art of espionage, of course, is seldom conducted in the open.... Nevertheless, it has been said with some certainty that over the years Leonard Boudin"-a prominent left-wing lawyer-"has been a contact of both the Czech and Soviet espionage agencies, the latter best known by its initials, KGB." writer about Ellsberg's defense attorney: "The art of espionage, of course, is seldom conducted in the open.... Nevertheless, it has been said with some certainty that over the years Leonard Boudin"-a prominent left-wing lawyer-"has been a contact of both the Czech and Soviet espionage agencies, the latter best known by its initials, KGB."

By the end of July the distinction between Hunt's projects and the Plumbers' dissolved. Each new scheme spun off others; best not to duplicate efforts, especially since Hunt and Liddy got along famously. The Ellsberg witch hunt had reached a snag. From FBI reports Hunt knew Ellsberg saw a shrink, Dr. Lewis J. Fielding. Perhaps they could do to Ellsberg what had been done to Barry Goldwater in 1964: discredit him as a madman. Perhaps they could figure out this mysterious figure's mysterious motives: money, fame, ideological loyalty to the Soviet Union? Some vicious blackness deep within his soul?

(Some angles they didn't consider: conscience, patriotism.) FBI agents visited Dr. Fielding July 20. The doctor wouldn't hand over his records. The CIA did a psychological profile based on publicly available information. Its utility proved limited. It was time, the Plumbers decided, to plan a black-bag job. Ehrlichman brought the proposal to the president. "Krogh should, of course, do whatever he considered necessary to get to the bottom of the matter," the president replied, "to learn what Ellsberg's motives and potential further harmful action might be." His only complaint was that the plan wasn't aggressive enough.

Young and Krogh filed the action memo, with the customary boxes for "approve" and "disapprove." Ehrlichman scrawled his initials in the former and added, "if done under your a.s.surance that it is not traceable."

Hunt approached a Cuban friend, Bernard Barker, whom he'd worked with at the Bay of Pigs. There was "a matter of national security" to carry out, Hunt apprised him, for an organization "above both the FBI and CIA," against "a traitor to this country who had given information to a foreign emba.s.sy."

The team Barker recruited moved out to California in late August, casing a shrink's office in Beverly Hills in the service of their president, reporting back to David Young, "I think we have a perfect situation here for clandestine entry."

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE.

The Coven A PULP THRILLER OF RELEVANCE TO THE PULP THRILLER OF RELEVANCE TO THE W WHITE H HOUSE SITUATION came out in 1971. It was called came out in 1971. It was called The Coven. The Coven. The author was David St. John, and his hero was a Washington, D.C., private investigator named Jonathan P. Gault (kind of like the protagonist of Ayn Rand's The author was David St. John, and his hero was a Washington, D.C., private investigator named Jonathan P. Gault (kind of like the protagonist of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged Atlas Shrugged), who lived in a Georgetown that had become a warren of head shops and strung-out fourteen-year-old junkies: "The Aquarians had taken over." So had venal union bosses ripping off honest workingmen, and the kind of young defense lawyer who charges "police brutality" at the drop of a handkerchief and "affects a storefront desk in the ghetto and lunches at the Metropolitan Club where he feels more comfortable."

The detective's favorite old-time jazz joint was now polluted with the stylings of a sort of Afro-voodoo songstress named Andree Lescaut. The old Bojangles-like hoofer she's put out of work winds up murdered in the alley out back, then the temptress Lescaut herself. Suspicion falls on two hippies, Stud and Hugehead. The gumshoe cases their commune: "Peeling pink paint, sagging steps that suggested active termites...fingerpaintings, Day-Glo posters and scrawls instructing pa.s.sers-by to undertake unnatural connection with the President, and murder a pig a day. About average for the humanistic lifestyle within."

He questions one of the denizens: "He shrugged elaborately, scratched at the beaded headband, and wiped more dribble from his mouth.... 'What's his problem?' 'Hash. He has no mind left.'"

It arrives that the mastermind behind the crime is Senator Newborn Vane, who resembled a certain libertine solon from Ma.s.sachusetts, and his glamorous wife. Mrs. Vane "gets her jollies from the artists, writers, and beach boy types Vane gets public grants for," and procures prost.i.tutes for her husband, and tosses down c.o.c.ktails after toasting in Russian. The senator flies his own plane "to save time getting between here and the gra.s.s-the gra.s.s roots."

A clue-a pack of tarot cards, the same kind the real-life hippie murderer of Dr. Victor Ohta in Santa Cruz in 1970 left at the scene of the crime-leads Gault to a bizarre ritualistic scene staged out of a government-funded "Community Involvement Center." Black men and women "naked except for a loincloth" dance maniacally before Lescaut's coffin. A priestess shrieks, "In the name of Belial, Sasa, Behemoth, Asmodeus, Obayifo, Lilith, Nahemah, Set, Thoth, and the Black Goat, we beseech thee, Master, to sanctify this sacrifice." Then, the heroic gumshoe surrept.i.tiously looking on, the senator's wife "dipped into the throat and drew a b.l.o.o.d.y line across her pelvis, then tossed the dead pullet under the bier and stood with arms lifted and outstretched, displaying the inverted cross painted against her flesh."

Gault lays it all out before the skeptical cop: "Suppose I told you New-bold Vane was a devil-worshipper?"

So much for the senator's presidential ambitions.

"David St. John" was E. Howard Hunt, writing, like a good spook, under a pseudonym. He had started writing novels out of boredom from being put on ice at the CIA. He was quite successful at it, too.

The Coven provided a window into the mind of a Plumber. Everette Howard Hunt believed, as many in the White House believed, that behind the earnest humanitarian face of liberalism lay irredeemable evil. George Gordon Battle Liddy suspected Daniel Ellsberg was a KGB agent, or that the provided a window into the mind of a Plumber. Everette Howard Hunt believed, as many in the White House believed, that behind the earnest humanitarian face of liberalism lay irredeemable evil. George Gordon Battle Liddy suspected Daniel Ellsberg was a KGB agent, or that the Times Times had acquired the Pentagon Papers through a black-bag job. In their minds, every evil was linked. Liddy gave over twelve pages in his memoirs to an account of his involvement in a raid on the home of Timothy Leary-"one more problem of the sick '60s." When he moved to Washington in 1970, Liddy noted his neighbors as "career Democrat-liberal bureaucrats who hated Richard Nixon and had a laissez-faire att.i.tude toward the raising of their children"-so he threatened one of these children with "a restraining hold I had learned before in the FBI." For, "To permit the thought, spirit, life-style, and ideas of the '60s movement to achieve power and become the official way of life of the United States was a thought as offensive to me as was the thought of surrender to a career j.a.panese soldier in 1945." had acquired the Pentagon Papers through a black-bag job. In their minds, every evil was linked. Liddy gave over twelve pages in his memoirs to an account of his involvement in a raid on the home of Timothy Leary-"one more problem of the sick '60s." When he moved to Washington in 1970, Liddy noted his neighbors as "career Democrat-liberal bureaucrats who hated Richard Nixon and had a laissez-faire att.i.tude toward the raising of their children"-so he threatened one of these children with "a restraining hold I had learned before in the FBI." For, "To permit the thought, spirit, life-style, and ideas of the '60s movement to achieve power and become the official way of life of the United States was a thought as offensive to me as was the thought of surrender to a career j.a.panese soldier in 1945."

And when he considered the 1972 presidential election-"in view of the thousands of bombings, burnings, riots, and lootings of the '60s, to say nothing of the murders of police just because they were police, the killing of judges, and the general disintegration of the social order"-he realized that for Nixon to fight according to the normal procedures of democratic politics would have been just such a surrender. It was like one of the agents in a novel by Howard Hunt said: "We become lawless in a struggle for the rule of law-semi-outlaws who risk their lives to put down the savagery of others."

These men were not aliens. They were Americans-in a time when millions of Americans agreed with Joe Joe and resonated enough with E. Howard Hunt's dank anxieties to turn him into a bestselling author. and resonated enough with E. Howard Hunt's dank anxieties to turn him into a bestselling author.

Some scenes from sea to shining sea: The International a.s.sociation of Chiefs of Police reported that ninety-one cops were killed in the line of duty during the first nine months of 1971. In Philadelphia, former police chief Frank Rizzo campaigned for mayor as "the toughest cop in America." The iconic photograph of Chief Rizzo showed a nightstick poking out of his c.u.mmerbund at a black-tie banquet, the iconic act his club-swinging raid on what he was sure was a drug den (his evidence was the poetry, beards, and h.o.m.os.e.xuals). He won the 1971 Democratic nomination against two liberals who split the vote. In November he won the general election defending the police department practice of "turf drops": instead of charging black kids, they were left to fend for themselves in the toughest white neighborhoods. "He should build jails, not schools," one of his cabdriver supporters told a reporter. "Ninety percent of the kids are no good."

In New York vigilantes shouting "Never again!"-the slogan of the Jewish Defense League-firebombed the office of a talent booker who handled Soviet acts. (One secretary died.) A cabdriver in Queens rammed fifty welfare rights picketers calling for affordable day care: "I have a wife and four kids to support!" he cried before revving the accelerator. Down the Jersey Turnpike, an investigative journalist, Ron Porambo, came out with a book on the Newark riots, No Cause for Indictment, No Cause for Indictment, which doc.u.mented, in numbing and irrefutable detail, the cold-blooded killing of innocents and the systematic trashing of black-owned businesses by police and guardsmen. Two attempts on his life followed; in their wake, the Newark police accused him of shooting himself. In that same city the Newark Boys Chorus School, 80 percent of whose students were black, moved into a three-story Georgian mansion in an upper-middle-cla.s.s neighborhood. A homemade firebomb was tossed though a side window in September, doing no damage; a second attempt, over Thanksgiving, took out the entire top floor; in January, vandals torched the integrated school's buses. No one reported the fire to authorities. which doc.u.mented, in numbing and irrefutable detail, the cold-blooded killing of innocents and the systematic trashing of black-owned businesses by police and guardsmen. Two attempts on his life followed; in their wake, the Newark police accused him of shooting himself. In that same city the Newark Boys Chorus School, 80 percent of whose students were black, moved into a three-story Georgian mansion in an upper-middle-cla.s.s neighborhood. A homemade firebomb was tossed though a side window in September, doing no damage; a second attempt, over Thanksgiving, took out the entire top floor; in January, vandals torched the integrated school's buses. No one reported the fire to authorities.

Defiling school buses was a nationwide trend. Michigan was the vanguard after Judge Damon J. Keith, the federal district's only black jurist, rent de facto segregation's most sacrosanct taboo, the line between city and suburb, by ordering the white town of Pontiac to accept black students from Detroit. "What burns me to the bottom of my bones is that I paid an excessive amount of money so that my son could walk to school," one working-cla.s.s resident told the New York Times. New York Times. "I'm not going to pay big high school taxes and pay more for a home so that somebody can ship my son thirty miles away to get an inferior education." Then one hot evening just before the start of the school year, two terrorists slipped inside a depot and lit dynamite atop the fuel tanks of six school buses. Thousands of townspeople rallied to the terrorists' support, just as they used to do down South after lynchings. "Pontiac is the new South," a state legislator said. "I'm frankly ashamed to say right now that I am a citizen of this city." "I'm not going to pay big high school taxes and pay more for a home so that somebody can ship my son thirty miles away to get an inferior education." Then one hot evening just before the start of the school year, two terrorists slipped inside a depot and lit dynamite atop the fuel tanks of six school buses. Thousands of townspeople rallied to the terrorists' support, just as they used to do down South after lynchings. "Pontiac is the new South," a state legislator said. "I'm frankly ashamed to say right now that I am a citizen of this city."

In Washington, D.C., feminist Ti-Grace Atkinson, speaking at Catholic University, speculated over whether the Blessed Virgin Mary had been "knocked up." Enraged, William F. Buckley's sister Patricia raced onto the stage and started a.s.saulting her. In Mountain Home, Idaho, residents decided they'd had enough of the GI coffeehouse in their midst and burned it to the ground. In New Mexico, in the rugged town of Ruidoso, the set the previous year for the John Wayne picture Chisum, Chisum, barefoot Nancy Crowe Tapper and bearded Paul Edward Green, both of surburban Wheaton, Maryland, were a young couple living together without benefit of clergy. The town was well sick of hippies; Paul was arrested for falling afoul of Ruidoso's rarely enforced 125-year-old "lewd cohabitation" law. The statutory punishment for a first offense was supposed to be a verbal warning. The judge-who displayed a sign on his office door reading barefoot Nancy Crowe Tapper and bearded Paul Edward Green, both of surburban Wheaton, Maryland, were a young couple living together without benefit of clergy. The town was well sick of hippies; Paul was arrested for falling afoul of Ruidoso's rarely enforced 125-year-old "lewd cohabitation" law. The statutory punishment for a first offense was supposed to be a verbal warning. The judge-who displayed a sign on his office door reading JUDGE PRITCHETT: THE LAW WEST OF THE RIO RUIDOSO JUDGE PRITCHETT: THE LAW WEST OF THE RIO RUIDOSO-gave him thirty days instead. Paul didn't take his confinement particularly seriously; when given a chance to call a lawyer, he allegedly ambled away from the jailhouse. The second of two "warning shots" caught him in the back of the head. They said the hippie was running, yet Green had recently been injured and could barely walk. Charges were never pressed against the officer. This was only the latest in an epidemic of hippie lynchings in New Mexico: the nineteen-year-old heroin addict shot while handcuffed behind the back (ruled justifiable homicide) in Santa Fe; the sixteen-year-old girl who pa.s.sed a bad check shot by a storekeeper in the parking lot (no charges filed) in Albuquerque; communes razed, vans dynamited-young people, the Washington Post Washington Post reported on January 16, 1972, "beaten, raped, and killed." reported on January 16, 1972, "beaten, raped, and killed."